A user on talk.maemo.org has implemented a hardware hack connecting a GPRS module to an N810 through a serial adaptor and USB hub. I bought Telit GE865 gprs module [...] and make pigs fly. Telit module can do calls with no more than a earpiece, mike, two resistors & capacitors, a battery and an interface with N810. Cheap or particularly hardware-hack interested N810 owners now have a way to get their very own near-N900 Maemo device.
Valtteri Halla, one of the two members of MeeGo's "Technical Steering Group", has published a blog post describing the efforts underway to move MeeGo from "day zero" (the announcement) to "day one" (when the real work begins): he most important question is of course about the code. We hope to move on here very quickly now. Nokia and Intel have set the target to open the MeeGo repository by the end of this month. I guess this is something that finally will signify the real "Day One" of MeeGo project, a genuine merger of moblin and maemo. What is scheduled to be available then is the first and very raw baseline to a source and binary repository to build MeeGo trunk on Intel ATOM boards and Nokia N900. Many people have read that last statement to mean MeeGo will be fully supported and a usable OS on the N900. However, your editor would draw your attention to the phrases "first", "very raw" and "baseline". Having alternative Linux-based OSes boot on an N900 is not particularly troublesome (see Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and Mer); however there's a large difference between a developer platform and a usable, day-to-day, end-user phone OS.
The blog post has - as is to be expected - been well commented on, and it's refreshing to see Valtteri getting involved; responding to, and participating in a conversation with, his audience.
A hardware hack involving a 1W solar charger for RV batteries has been put together to charge an N900. Got this on sale for $15 a while back and assumed, correctly it seems, that it would work with the N900 as it had worked with the E71. An inexpensive cigarette-lighter charger like this makes for a simple mobile charging solution.